There are many types of formal poetry and for anyone who likes to write poetry, it’s worth your time getting to know these forms and trying a few as well. This teaches us all about meter and rhyme, how a poem should look on the page, and trying some of these is just plain fun. Here is a short run down of twenty different types of poetry. See how you do with some of these! You might surprise yourself, find a from you really like, and write a collection of them. 

Acrostic: first letter of each line spells something

Ballad: narrative like a folk story

Blank Verse: Unrhymed but has iambic pentameter

Cinquain: five-line poem with 2-4-6-8-2 syllables per line

Concrete: has a shape on the page like a tree

Elegy: a mourning to someone gone

Epic: long, narrative work like Hiawatha

Found: taking and reframing words from other sources like newspapers

Ghazal: couplets that share rhyme and refrain

Haiku: Japanese form of 5-7-5 syllable pattern 

Limerick: a humorous poem of 5 lines

Lyric: short poems of emotion

Narrative: a form of story telling

Ode: message to a subject, event or object

Pastural: Idealized environment, often rural life

Sestina: complex 39-line poem

Slam: Oral, competitive poetry

Sonnet: 14-line poem with specific rhyme scheme about love think Shakespeare

Villanelle: 19-line. 5 tercets followed by a quatrain with 2 repeating rhymes and 2 refrains

The Ode is a great form to try. Odes were developed in Ancient Greece. An ode then was a song or chant performed to celebrate athletic victories. Odes are praise using rich and clever description. Here’s a famous example of an ode poem. 

Ode to the Hotel Near the Children’s Hospital

BY KEVIN YOUNG

Praise the restless beds

Praise the beds that do not adjust

     that won’t lift the head to feed

     or lower for shots

     or blood

     or raise to watch the tinny TV

Praise the hotel TV that won’t quit

      its murmur & holler

Praise the room service

      that doesn’t exist

      just the slow delivery to the front desk

      of cooling pizzas

      & brown bags leaky

      greasy & clear

Praise the vending machines

Praise the change

Praise the hot water

& the heat

       or the loud cool

       that helps the helpless sleep.

Praise the front desk

       who knows to wake

       Rm 120 when the hospital rings

Praise the silent phone

Praise the dark drawn

       by thick daytime curtains

       after long nights of waiting,

       awake.

Praise the waiting & then praise the nothing

       that’s better than bad news

Praise the wakeup call

       at 6 am

Praise the sleeping in

Praise the card hung on the door

       like a whisper

       lips pressed silent

Praise the stranger’s hands

       that change the sweat of sheets

Praise the checking out

Praise the going home

       to beds unmade

       for days

Beds that won’t resurrect

       or rise

that lie there like a child should

        sleeping, tubeless

Praise this mess

         that can be left

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Virginia Watts is the author of poetry and stories found in The MacGuffin, Epiphany, CRAFT, The Florida Review, Reed Magazine, Pithead Chapel, Eclectica Magazine among others. She has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize. Her debut short story collection Echoes from the Hocker House was short listed for 2024 Eric Hoffer Grand Prize, selected as one of the Best Indie Books of 2023 by Kirkus Book Reviews, and won third place in the 2024 Feathered Quill Book Awards. Please visit her.

Virginia’s new book is now available from Old Scratch Press:

Her prior poetry chapbooks Shot Full of Holes and The Werewolves of Elk Creek 

 are available from Moonstone Press. And her debut short story collection Echoes from the Hocker House is not to be missed!